Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

shivan128

shivan128

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Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
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I kind of get some of the hype for this Lunar Collection. Go price the PS1 games complete. Also, it made sense for those who wanted this but wanted to know if the new voice actors were good and the ports were good... that they would wait for launch and some feedback before throwing money at it. Myself, I'm sticking with my digital plan. I'll wait for 1/2 off and if I really want to play them then... I'll buy them.

Anime update:
  • Honey Lemon Soda
  • The Dreaming Boy is a Realist
  • My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999
  • K-On!
  • Bocchi the Rock
  • The Danger in my Heart
  • Say "I Love You"
  • Lazarus
    • Honey Lemon Soda - I was in the process of watching this during the last update. Overall I enjoyed it. The introspection by the female lead was pretty good. I now see there is this whole sub-genre of anime where a loner/social-outcast gets paired with the popular kid. I think they covered some good ground here and I felt pretty satisfied by the way it ended.
    • The Dreaming Boy is a Realist - Started off kind of odd with the guy obsessed with the girl, but it course corrected quick and I loved all of his inner dialog and how he changed the way he was thinking and grew through to the end.
    • My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999 (also called, Loving Yamada-Kun at LV999, not to be confused with "My Love Story" which is a different anime). Even though I'm not into MMORPG's, I found this pretty enjoyable. Pairing a second year college girl with a high school senior, while a bit odd... this is Japan and they were only 2 years apart. Dude graduated before anything happened. So it was pretty innocent. The way they used the MMORPG in the series was kind of fun, even though I don't care for those games. This is also one of the few in my list here that isn't based in a school setting.
    • K-On! - My oldest son pushed me to this. While I enjoyed the whole series, none of it really hit me until season 2 episode 20 (pretty much during the last few episodes and the movie). My son actually ate dinner with me as I was watching this for several days and then watched the last main episode and the episodes after as well as the movie when I did. It did take me a bit to get over the character designs as in the episodes they look way too young to be high school students. Only the end credits really made them look their age.
    • Bocchi the Rock - Another of my son's recommendations. While this didn't really hit the emotions for me, the story telling and richness of developing the characters was amazing. Having a lot of the show set outside the HS in a club was a nice change of pace. Even though I tried to listen to some K-On music, I mainly just liked the ending themes... meanwhile I've been listening to Bocchi The Rock songs through apple music (Kessoku Band) pretty much since the day I finished this. They did a lot with the short first season. The character development from the social outcast growing out of her shell was nice to see without there being any romance angle. It's kind of a shame there's no dub for such a fantastic show. If they ever do one, I'll rewatch just to take in the visuals again.
    • The Danger in my Heart - I was mixed on starting this as I didn't like the premise. Starting it, yeah, pretty disturbing view by the main character. Thankfully that softened quickly and it moved on from his initial screwed up thoughts to showing his growth and change. In the end, I thought this was a pretty great ride as season 2 came to a close. It did manage to hit some emotions and I like how the characters developed through the entire run. Also, another anime with outcast character and popular character getting together.
    • Say "I Love You" - I started this last night on hulu. Again, it falls into the same genre of social outcast and popular kid being paired up, but I feel like all of these series I have watched so far have done some unique things despite falling into the same sub-genre. Like, this one pairs up well with Honey Lemon Soda because the outcast character is female, but the path and the characters are quite different as are the settings and goals. I'll probably finish this tonight or tomorrow since it's another short series (one of the reasons I picked it).
    • Lazarus - My oldest son and I are watching this together, though so far we've only watched the first episode. It's really stylish and shows the Cowboy Bebop roots with the first chase sequence. It's definitely not in my current genre preference, but it's hard not to see the quality there. Probably will continue saving up episodes until my oldest son is ready to watch more.
    [*]
 
Finished Say "I Love You" and figured I'd give Dandadan a try. That's one weirdass anime. It oddly still kind of fits with a bunch of the other stuff I've been watching with the sub-genre of loner/nerd/outcast character paired with more social/outgoing, though in this case not quite the most popular kid in school. The art style is kind of bonkers mixing between almost standard generic realistic modern (which I like) and super artsy exaggeration. The story itself is just... way over the top. It's kind of a nice change, though this definitely isn't my genere right now... it's a good palette cleanser before taking on something more serious and realistic. Nicely, Season 2 is in July. So if I'm not satisfied here, there's not a long wait for the next season.

Eshop has some good deals on Persona games. These seem to come in cycles, but if I were in the mood for Person 4... and didn't want to break out the vita and my digital (or my physical) copies... $10 on eshop isn't bad. I've held of on Blaster Master Zero 3 & Bloodstained Curse of the Night 2 for a while and they both have good sales. There's also some VN's and VN related games that mix in other genre on sale, but I'm kind of clueless on those and which might be wroth it.

No Switch 2 for me from the store preorders. May 8th (nearly 2 weeks) before Nintendo does it's direct purchase opton. Qualifications are being an active 12 month Nintendo Online subscriber and having logged 50 hours of gameplay. I guess that's to help curb scalpers. We'll see come the 8th., but this is kind of giving me time to question the sanity of buying early simply to avoid whatever trumpian-bs that is going to happen next with this trade war. It's not a FOMO thing but a Fear of Grossly Overpaying thing (FOGO?) or opting to simply be left behind at the switch gen and not move forward as a gamer anytime soon. It's pretty tempting just to make peace with not getting one this year and let the dust settle and stick with original switch.
 
Sorry the pre-order is a bust.

Bocci the Rock is one I bought on Blu-ray. It's awesome. Sadly, the review of the album based on the band in the show is supposedly phoned in filler tracks, or I'd have bought that, too.

Mrs. and I are watching "To Your Eternity" and halfway through the first season, it's definitely amazing. Great story telling and wondering where the over arching story will go.
 
I got a pre-order in, but concede that it's expensive and not for everyone's situation. I sold all my nsw hardware except for one Lite several months back in preparation . The backward compatibility and increased docked mode specs (namely hdr) have me sold. A handful of games I already own are basically going to be my launch titles. XCX, Suikoden remaster, etc.

I am a little uneasy to see so many products limited to digital keycard only physical releases. I'm not inclined to buy a single one of those. And it's looking like the only option for so many of the jrpgs I would normally buy.

I mean, the Suikoden remaster was only released <2 months ago. And Konami is not giving the title a nsw2 update or upgrade option. I'd have to buy it a second time and only with digital options. That's worse than an Atlus re-release in my book. I guess the lesson is.. I should have bought this title on playstation.

Finishing up Unicorn Overlord on ps5 right now. Absolutely love it. I'm glad I picked up that CE off woot. If anyone is watching a current woot item, I believe there will be a blanket 10% promo in the woot app starting at midnight cst tonight.
 
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TheKbob said:
Bocci the Rock is one I bought on Blu-ray. It's awesome. Sadly, the review of the album based on the band in the show is supposedly phoned in filler tracks, or I'd have bought that, too.
Click to expand...

The regular Bocci The Rock Original Soundtrack is background sounds and what not. What you want, if you like the songs, is the 2022 Kessoku Band album. That's the one that has all the full length songs with the musicians hired to create the music for the anime. There's also a 2024 "Kessoku Band Concert - Fixed Star - at Zepp Haneda (TOKYO)" which is a concert album. Just youtube the band... it's pretty amazing. Some of the live performances on youtube, they use VA's to create some scenes before the band performs. Not sure if it's all the same VA's as the anime, but I think there is some crossover. When i go to Japan, I plan to attend one of their performances if they are still doing them.
 
On one hand, it eliminates the bald-faced lie that games typically come complete on disc, without mandatory day1 updates most of the time. Which would be fine in theory. They're being up front about it. OTTH, they are selling us blank carts, gauche packaging, and worst of all normalizing this type of publishing behavior so that it is going to become far more prevalent.

Games with this labeling are going to sell ~50% fewer copies. It becomes that strange self-fulfilling cycle that Microsoft prognosticated and originated: "See, customers don't want physical games any longer". These are not the type of physical games that I want to buy. Not to mention the NSW2 only has 256gb of system storage. and I'm not buying one of those $100-$200 memory cards. Sick of that manufacturer behavior too.
 
Same as original Switch, I only get first party Nintendo games and wait for Steam/Playstation for third party games so key card will have very little impact for me.
 
I feel like I'm past the point of ever trying to follow games on multiple platforms at the same time. I mostly lean towards games from Japanese developers anyway and I do like several Nitnendo franchises. So it just makes sense to stick with a single platform and also next go round just go digital for most stuff and only buy when I'm ready to play something (unless the deal is just too good and it's something in one of my primary series I follow). Most japanese development studios are pretty dang good at creating games that don't eat up a ton of storage. Not saying there aren't some who make huge install games, but look at everything Nintendo publishes and then NISA and like a bunch of other devs... seems like they stick to under 16 gigs and a lot of them clock in under 8. Like Mario Oddysey is 5.6 GB. Even Xenoblade Chronicles X is just 13.5 GB.

Nicely, looking through the eshop at various install sizes, I came across the listing for Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ and it's been updated to include install size for both Switch and Switch 2. So either they have it fixed or they expect it to be fixed before the console launches. Oddly, Trails Through Daybreak doesn't have the dual install size listing.
 
Vinny said:
You guys are talking about artwork when the real topic of discussion is: Is the content on disc or not?
Click to expand...

Going by Capcom's history of SFV releases, they've all been base game on disc + code for the season(s). I don't expect this to change, it's their way of combating the 2nd hand market.
 
pjmomo said:
Going by Capcom's history of SFV releases, they've all been base game on disc + code for the season(s). I don't expect this to change, it's their way of combating the 2nd hand market.
Click to expand...

Does even more to combat the 2nd hand market since I won't buy it initially then...
 
I managed to get a pre-order in at Walmart, but not Best Buy where I would have liked to have gotten it. There's no must have title for me, but I figure I'll get it eventually and it's not like the price is likely to drop, if ever and may even go up, so may as well get it if I can.

While I don't like that game key cards don't have the actual content on the cart, I appreciate the unified marketing term that clearly spells out what you're getting compared to small text boxes trying to hide the fact that you're getting a downloader on a disc/cart. I don't think it will significantly affect sales for the average consumer though. We'll still be seeing codes in a box of course, but I wonder if this will slow that down to some degree.

TheKbob said:
Bocci the Rock is one I bought on Blu-ray. It's awesome. Sadly, the review of the album based on the band in the show is supposedly phoned in filler tracks, or I'd have bought that, too.
Click to expand...
As @nightc1 mentioned, the Kessoku Band album features all the full length songs in the show. The majority of the songs are either the songs played during the show or the opening and endings. Only a few weren't featured, so I suppose you could call that "filler", though they have a similar vibe, so you may still enjoy them. Even without those songs I'd say you're still getting a full album. I picked it up last time I was over there and would recommend it if you enjoyed the music =)
 
pjmomo said:
Going by Capcom's history of SFV releases, they've all been base game on disc + code for the season(s). I don't expect this to change, it's their way of combating the 2nd hand market.
Click to expand...
It's also caused Street Fighter to be more of a cult following, and less of a mainstream exposure thing.

Casual fans can't go and pick up a complete version game anymore. Even when they do they are immediately plastered with nonstop DLC advertisement.
It's also costing its main players to have to spend 2-3x more than normal. And people are okay with being nickle and dimed, but definitely not $80 Nintendo games. Customers prefer being take advantage of with A La Carte. Buy 1, Pay 2....but you get a choice!
 
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